bookstacled.’s Reviews > Black Coffee in a Coconut Shell: Caste as Lived Experience > Status Update

My kindle unlimited expired about a year ago and I've kept my device on airplane mode all this while so that I can finish these books 🥲. About time I get to the mission.

“Caste discrimination exists even among artistes. Since koothu performers from the lowered castes are insulted by the so-called upper caste artistes, koothu performers mostly form groups of their own caste. However, many times, there is also the compulsion to put up with caste discrimination. Art never seems to rise above caste.”
Caste in Folk Theatre, K Anbazhagan

“Wherever I go, I still hear the voice of one dominant caste or the other. The suffering of my childhood is so deeply embedded in my mind that a shiver runs through the body. Over a period of time, however, the suffering has given me strength and the support of many other castes. In rising against caste domination, I have become twice the person I am in strength.”

A Relentless Voice, N Arulmurugan.

“I belong to a generation that went to school immediately after Independence in the late forties and fifties. Among other songs, Bharathiyar’s ‘There are no castes, little girl’ and his assertion that there are only two castes, woman and man, made deep impressions on our minds and we grew up with the notion that in order to do away with caste we only had to deny its existence and assert our own casteless status. ”